Typ­ic­ally, con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans de­fend loc­al flex­ib­il­ity and res­ist fed­er­al man­dates. Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell of Ken­tucky, for in­stance, re­cently wrote all 50 gov­ernors ur­ging them to ob­struct Pres­id­ent Obama’s im­pend­ing reg­u­la­tions re­quir­ing states to re­duce power-plant car­bon emis­sions. Re­pub­lic­ans like­wise cheered when the Su­preme Court ruled that Wash­ing­ton could not pres­sure states to ex­pand Medi­caid cov­er­age for the un­in­sured by with­hold­ing their ex­ist­ing Medi­caid fund­ing.

Con­versely, Demo­crats usu­ally cham­pi­on uni­fied na­tion­al ac­tion on is­sues like these. But the two parties switched sides when House Re­pub­lic­ans voted earli­er in Ju­ly, over nearly united Demo­crat­ic op­pos­i­tion, to deny law-en­force­ment grants to cit­ies that res­ist fed­er­al ef­forts to de­port un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants.

These ideo­lo­gic­al gyr­a­tions have ob­scured the real is­sue in the emo­tion­al de­bate that was ig­nited when a re­peatedly de­por­ted un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rant ran­domly shot Kath­ryn Steinle in San Fran­cisco on Ju­ly 1. The best es­tim­ates are that a smal­ler share of un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants com­mits ser­i­ous crimes than oth­er Amer­ic­ans. But all cit­ies would be­ne­fit if Wash­ing­ton and loc­al­it­ies co­oper­ated more ef­fect­ively to re­move those who are dan­ger­ous. The key ques­tion is wheth­er the best way to build that part­ner­ship is with sticks, which con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans prefer, or car­rots, which Obama is of­fer­ing.

Some his­tory helps cla­ri­fy the choice. The term “sanc­tu­ary cit­ies” has no spe­cif­ic leg­al defin­i­tion; it traces back to policies some cit­ies ad­op­ted dur­ing the 1980s to sup­port loc­al churches that de­clared them­selves “sanc­tu­ar­ies” for refugees flee­ing the era’s Cent­ral Amer­ic­an civil wars. Later, the term en­com­passed cit­ies that barred po­lice and mu­ni­cip­al work­ers from ask­ing about the im­mig­ra­tion status of people they in­ter­ac­ted with, or those that pre­ven­ted po­lice from ar­rest­ing res­id­ents solely be­cause they were un­doc­u­mented. Even now, neither of those ideas kindles much con­tro­versy.

The sanc­tu­ary idea really took off as Obama im­ple­men­ted the “Se­cure Com­munit­ies” pro­gram that George W. Bush had launched shortly be­fore he left of­fice. Un­der Se­cure Com­munit­ies, the fin­ger­prints of al­most every­one ar­res­ted across Amer­ica were sent to Im­mig­ra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment to de­term­ine their im­mig­ra­tion status. If ICE de­term­ined that someone in cus­tody lacked leg­al status, it could is­sue a “de­tain­er” re­quest­ing that loc­al au­thor­it­ies hold the sub­ject for 48 hours after crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings so ICE could pur­sue de­port­a­tion.

Such de­tain­ers even­tu­ally ac­coun­ted for about three-fourths of de­port­a­tions not con­duc­ted at the bor­der, the non­par­tis­an Mi­gra­tion Policy In­sti­tute noted in a re­cent re­port. But more and more cit­ies balked at co­oper­at­ing. They com­plained ICE was de­port­ing not only ser­i­ous crim­in­als but oth­er­wise law-abid­ing un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants caught for minor of­fenses — and con­cluded that co­oper­at­ing in that drag­net un­der­mined po­lice re­la­tions with im­mig­rant com­munit­ies. MPI cal­cu­lated that 350 counties and cit­ies (plus three states) that col­lect­ively housed more than half of all un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants have re­fused to hon­or at least some ICE de­tain­ers. The list ex­tends bey­ond lib­er­al en­claves like New York and San Fran­cisco to heart­land loc­ales like Wichita and Omaha. “It’s def­in­itely lots of small towns, middle Amer­ica, red states,” says Marc Rosen­blum, au­thor of the MPI re­port. Fed­er­al court rul­ings that defined the de­tain­ers as re­quests, not re­quire­ments, fur­ther dis­cour­aged par­ti­cip­a­tion.

Fa­cing such wide­spread res­ist­ance, Obama last Novem­ber re­placed Se­cure Com­munit­ies with the Pri­or­ity En­force­ment Pro­gram. Un­der that ini­ti­at­ive, ICE still checks the fin­ger­prints of every­one who is ar­res­ted. But now it asks to be no­ti­fied only be­fore loc­al of­fi­cials re­lease un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants who have been con­victed of ser­i­ous crimes, or those whom ICE con­siders a na­tion­al se­cur­ity threat. ICE seeks ex­tra de­ten­tion only for those it be­lieves it has prob­able cause to de­port.

Some evid­ence sug­gests the new pro­gram is at­tract­ing more co­oper­a­tion. Home­land Se­cur­ity Sec­ret­ary Jeh John­son re­cently test­i­fied that about 35 large com­munit­ies have joined PEP, while five have re­fused. John­son won’t identi­fy the cit­ies co­oper­at­ing, but Los Angeles County, which had re­jec­ted Se­cure Com­munit­ies, re­cently voted to join the new ef­fort.

Mar­i­elena Hin­cap­ié, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of the Na­tion­al Im­mig­rant Law Cen­ter, cor­rectly notes that the best way to re­build fed­er­al-loc­al en­force­ment co­oper­a­tion is to pass com­pre­hens­ive im­mig­ra­tion re­form that re­as­sures cit­ies that the un­doc­u­mented without crim­in­al re­cords won’t be up­rooted. Re­ject­ing such re­form, con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans (very few of whom rep­res­ent urb­an cen­ters) want to co­erce cit­ies in­to co­oper­at­ing with fund­ing threats. But as Rosen­blum notes, that lever prob­ably isn’t strong enough to per­suade many du­bi­ous cit­ies.

Obama’s re­vised course is more prom­ising. Look­ing to reach com­mon ground with mostly blue cit­ies on im­mig­ra­tion en­force­ment, he’s of­fer­ing flex­ible agree­ments tailored to loc­al con­cerns (just as he’s now do­ing with red states on car­bon re­duc­tions and Medi­caid ex­pan­sion). But that bal­anced ap­proach will work only if lib­er­al cit­ies re­cog­nize that re­fus­ing to help re­move even dan­ger­ous felons is an un­ten­able po­s­i­tion, as the jus­ti­fi­able out­rage over Steinle’s death demon­strated. If “sanc­tu­ary cit­ies” re­ject Obama’s car­rot, they may even­tu­ally find them­selves fa­cing the Re­pub­lic­ans’ stick.

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